A student float drives through downtown Vancouver at the start of the Great Trek to Point Grey. UBC Historical Photograph Collection.

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. The UBC students’ great trek is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

Students have been protesting at the University of British Columbia since the very beginning. In 1922 the university was just a muddy construction site at the tip of Point Grey. Frustrated students organized an angry march to challenge the government to live up to its promise to build the university. Read More

The local band 54-40 rescued and restored the famed Smiling Buddha neon sign and donated it to the Vancouver Museum.

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. The rise and fall of Vancouver’s punk scene is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]Read More

The 1915 Millionaires, in maroon jerseys with the Vancouver V. Cyclone Taylor is second from the left in the back row.

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. Cyclone Taylor and the Vancouver Millionaires is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

Vancouver is a hockey-mad city. At the start of each season, fans expect that it will be “their time” — when their beloved Canucks will go all the way to become Stanley Cup champions. It happened once before, back in the days of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, when Cyclone Taylor led the Vancouver Millionaires to hockey glory in old Denman Arena. Read More

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. The Komagata Maru is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

The steamer Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver harbour in May 1914 with more than 370 passengers from India on board. They were looking to begin new lives in Canada, but the authorities said No. The standoff lasted two months and ended in mayhem and murder. Read More

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. The “Babes in the Woods” murder is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

A Parks Board gardener, clearing leaves near Beaver Lake, came across a cheap fur coat. Lifting it up, he made a grisly discovery — the skeletal remains of two young children. Dubbed the Babes in the Woods by the press, the sensational, unsolved case remains a haunting piece of Vancouver lore.

A singer in the spotlight, some musicians and dancers, and those weird stalactites — the Cave experience.

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. Vancouver’s exotic Cave Supper Club is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

Vancouver may be known as a No Fun City, but in the 1950s, the city had the exotic Cave. To find sophisticated entertainment in old Vancouver you went underground, into a grotto where stalactites hung from the ceiling and pirate’s gold shimmered in darkly lit corners. The Cave Supper Club hosted the world’s most famous entertainers and beautiful showgirls for 44 years. It was the rare place in subdued Vancouver to go out on a weekend evening for some risqué entertainment and exotic drinks.Read More

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. Gastown’s Gassy Jack is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

When Capt. Jack Deighton and his family pulled their canoe onto the south shore of the Burrrard Inlet in 1867, Jack was on one more search for riches. He had been a sailor on British and American ships, rushed for gold in California and the Cariboo, piloted boats on the Fraser River and ran a tavern in New Westminster. He was broke again, but he wasted no time in starting a new business and building the settlement that would become Vancouver.

The Birks building in 1946, looking east on Georgia Street. Vancouver Public Library.

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. Cyclone Taylor and the Vancouver Millionaires is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

The sparkling white terra cotta tiles of the Birks building lit the southeast corner of Granville and Georgia from 1913. Inside, sparkling jewelry, silver and fine china attracted the most demanding, and wealthy, clientele. It was a shock to the city when the Birks family decided to tear the impressive grand dame down in 1975.

The Montreal-based Birks jewelry chain moved its Vancouver store into the ten-storey downtown location on November 8, 1913. It had been located on the northeast corner of Granville and Hastings since 1906, when Birks bought out George Trovey’s jewelry store and adopted his trademark street clock as its own.

[Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. The UBC students’ great trek is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

If you were strolling down Granville Street in post-war Vancouver, chances are that an affable photographer would step out from behind his camera to tell you that he’d just snapped your picture. Foncie Pulice was his name, and the sidewalk was his studio.

The BC Electric building in 1957 (BC Archives) is now the Electra condominiums.

Editor’s Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its firstfree app, Vancouver In Time, highlighting the stories of the city. The UBC students’ great trek is one of 45 unique stories in the app. Download the app here.]

When BC Electric chairman Dal Grauer decided to move to new headquarters south of Georgia Street, he wanted a building that would symbolize optimism and progress. What he got was a gleaming 21-storey modernist structure that glowed with electric light 24 hours a day.